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Phys.org / Cosmic bombardment may have opened Earth's crust for prebiotic chemistry
Asteroids and planetesimals regularly bombarded Earth between about 4.6 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, during the Hadean and Archean eons. Because few rocks today are more than 4 billion years old, our understanding of ...
Phys.org / Ancient hominins selected basalt sources for specific tools nearly 800,000 years ago, study reveals
A new study finds that ancient hominins nearly 800,000 years ago deliberately selected specific basalt sources for different stages of tool production rather than simply using whatever stone was available nearby. By tracing ...
Phys.org / Hidden geometry explains why kernel methods separate complex data so well
Are two sets of data genuinely different, or is it because of randomness? This question, known as the two-sample testing problem, becomes notoriously difficult in modern datasets, because they are often high-dimensional, ...
Tech Xplore / Asynchronous AI cuts computing energy by orders of magnitude while learning continuously
As artificial intelligence systems grow larger and more powerful, their energy demands are rising dramatically. But recent research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst published in Nature Communications suggests ...
Phys.org / How plants survive constant DNA damage: Newly identified repair protein protects growth-critical stem cells
Similar to the way DNA damage can contribute to human diseases such as cancer, it can also disrupt growth, development and survival in plants. Every day, plants endure environmental stresses such as sunlight, radiation, drought ...
Phys.org / Medicinal plants yield carbon nanoparticles that glow red and flag toxic metals
What do iron, lead and nickel have in common? These heavy metals are an indispensable part of many industries. However, they also share a dark reality: They are serious environmental and public health threats. Every day, ...
Phys.org / Rocket launches and reentries harm Earth's ozone layer
The space industry is surging. In coming years, nearly 10,000 spacecraft are slated to launch into low-Earth orbit for a variety of purposes, such as global surveillance, space tourism, and satellite "megaconstellations" ...
Phys.org / Astronomers discover the earliest known flickering quasar
A supermassive black hole lies at the heart of every galaxy, including the Milky Way. When a black hole is active, it pulls material in as a whirlpool of high-temperature gas and dust. As this cosmic material piles up and ...
Phys.org / Wonderwerk Cave bones reveal possible fire use by human ancestors 1.79 million years ago
The discovery of fire was a major milestone in human evolution, giving our ancestors a way to stay warm, ward off predators, and eventually start cooking food. But exactly when this first happened is still intensely debated, ...
Phys.org / Aerosols may warm or cool the climate depending on timing, new study finds
A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem challenges a long-held assumption in climate science by showing that aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere—can either warm or cool the climate, depending on ...
Phys.org / Cloud-tested quantum noise model predicts superconducting qubit errors with sevenfold better accuracy
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have developed a practical, comprehensive noise-modeling framework for a popular class of ...
Phys.org / Tabletop experiment helps reconcile fundamental physics
Assistant Professor Haocun Yu is something of a scientific diplomat. In a recent Physical Review Letters publication, she and her colleagues show how a tabletop experiment can bring together two bedrock physics theories that ...
